Some Animals are More Equal than Others

[Smarmie Doofus]

Best argument for animal rights I've seen in a long time. Today's NYT ( onine version):

It’s time to take a look at the line between “pet” and “animal.” When the ASPCA sends an agent to the home of a Brooklyn family to arrest one of its members for allegedly killing a hamster, something is wrong.

That “something” is this: we protect “companion animals” like hamsters while largely ignoring what amounts to the torture of chickens and cows and pigs. In short, if I keep a pig as a pet, I can’t kick it. If I keep a pig I intend to sell for food, I can pretty much torture it. State laws known as “Common Farming Exemptions” allow industry — rather than lawmakers — to make any practice legal as long as it’s common. “In other words,” as Jonathan Safran Foer, the author of “Eating Animals,” wrote me via e-mail, “the industry has the power to define cruelty. It’s every bit as crazy as giving burglars the power to define trespassing.”

Meanwhile, there are pet police. So when 19-year-old Monique Smith slammed her sibling’s hamster on the floor and killed it, as she may have done in a fit of rage last week, an ASPCA agent — there are 18 of them, busily responding to animal cruelty calls in the five boroughs and occasionally beyond — arrested her. (The charges were later dropped, though Ms. Smith spent a night in jail at Rikers Island.)

In light of the way most animals are treated in this country, I’m pretty sure that ASPCA agents don’t need to spend their time in Brooklyn defending rodents.


More at:


http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/15/some-animals-are-more-equal-than-others/?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=thab1

[Name removed]

1. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[get the red out]

2. No animals should be tortured

And that wicked little bitch should have spent more than a night in jail.

[johnroshan]

3. Its a tough issue alright...

but honestly, I came in here hungry for some Orwellian discussion...<:-(>

[Smarmie Doofus]

5. Check out the Bradley Manning threads.

"Orwellian" is putting it mildly; particularly as the term applies to government-induced language corruption.

You'll be in hog-heaven.

Tee-hee.

[CommonSensePLZ]

4. Don't buy it

Killing someone's animal like that is just malicious and unfair. If a person raises chicken or pigs for food than that's what they're meant for, and the industry often does try for humane killing methods lest they be bombarded with protests, protests which may educate and disgust prospective customers and cost them money. Bullying like what you said just sounds wrong and I think people who make hobbies of doing that should be penalized, if not due to the ethical unfairness and sheer meanness, than because that hamster was not her "property." People shouldn't be allowed to think they can just play around with any other thing's life for a hobby and get away with it.

In fact there are cases where even when the animal is property abuse is still quite unright, like in dog and cock fighting where the lives and suffering of innocent animals is less important than the jollies of spectators.

Vivisection, crushing, no. I can't just say these things are ok just because, and maye that's because I have a heart and would never want anyone to just do them to me.